As Freaky Girl settles into its jogging groove, Orville "Shaggy" Burrell growls over The Kraft's Stakhanovite vocal legwork and lets slip a chuckle. In an instant, its good-natured lasciviousness encapsulates the unlikely but undisputed king of reggae. Shaggy's shtick is straightforward but appealing. His love songs - girl meets Shaggy, girl wants Shaggy, Shaggy obliges - are platforms to discuss his bedtime prowess ("Passion and ecstasy; you know the drill", he explains on Not Fair) or his life as a sexually active superstar. It is invariably harmless fluff, but Shaggy is often a spectator on his own album: Dance & Shout heavily samples Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), while Hope is a close relation of Love of the Common People. Shaggy does not sing as such, so he gets others to do it. Yet, when he growls against a choir on Joy You Bring or duets with Samantha Cole on the naughty Luv Me Luv Me, he is impossible to dislike. In fact, he is a guilty delight. (JA)

Neil Finn One Nil (Parlophone) *** £15.99

Since disbanding Crowded House - effectively his solo project - in 1996, Neil Finn is not quite what he used to be. For all its careful crafting, One Nil offers no melody to eclipse his past, nor is there a phrase to compare with "Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you". Even so, Finn will never make a poor album, and One Nil grows in stature with each hearing. Wendy and Lisa, once of Prince's Revolution, are frequent collaborators: they supply lumpen beats to Rest of the Day and Don't Ask Why, but they also put a renewed spring in Finn's step on the inspired Elastic Heart and the feisty single Wherever You Are. More than many lesser talents, Finn is responsible for his career curve: married for more than 20 years, unwilling to uproot from Australia or New Zealand, he was never superstar material. One Nil - quality throughout, but with a lingering feeling of what might have been - suggests he has accepted his fate with dignity. (JA)

Martin Antibalas and his friends are a rousing curiosity: a Brooklyn-based band consisting of at least 14 members, determined to revive and update the tradition of Nigeria's greatest musical rebel, Fela Kuti. Fela's Afrobeat style was a mixture of traditional Yoruba music, funk and jazz, and involved lengthy instrumental passages and chanting vocal work-outs in which he could vent his fury at Nigeria's military rulers. There's not quite the same sense of danger in the US,but the Antibalas team strive hard for that tense Lagos feel. Their long songs have titles like Uprising and World War IV, and follow the Afrobeat format, though with a slick veneer. Like many US revivalist bands, they are strong on skill and technique, but less good at innovation; and, inevitably, they can't match Fela's sense of anger, excitement and musical bravery. That said, they are a lively, stylish band, with strong keyboards, brass and percussion. (RD)

Cesaria Evora Sao Vicente di Longe (BMG/RCA Victor) *** £13.99

Now rightly established as a best-selling international star, Cesaria Evora has moved on from exploring the music of her home (the Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of west Africa), which fuses African and Portuguese styles, to explore that music's links with other Afro-Latin styles across the Atlantic. She has been given the full superstar treatment, with recording sessions in Havana, Rio and Paris, and a supporting cast of nearly 60 musicians, arrangers and engineers. Was it worth it? Well, her intimate voice is as distinctive as ever, but those immaculately recorded orchestras of sweeping strings and guitars often sound out of place, and at times there's a clash between her thoughtful approach and that of the musicians, who sound desperate to get up and dance. Evora's singing may have a limited emotional range, but when it comes to languid melancholia she's in a class of her own. That's true here on the cool, sad Ponta De Fi, which marks her song-writing debut; Regresso, a collaboration with Brazil's Caetano Veloso; and an exquisite, piano-backed treatment of the Brazilian standard Negue. (RD)

Martin Carthy The Carthy Chronicles (Free Reed, 4 CDs) **** £39.99

Martin Carthy is a disconcertingly unassuming celebrity. He's the finest, most versatile guitarist on the folk scene, but there's been a danger in recent years that his achievements could be overlooked as attention has focused on his wife Norma Waterson and daughter Eliza Carthy. So here's an impressive 83-track box set to put that right. The music - over five hours' worth - is remarkably varied, but this intriguing, patchy compilation gives only a taster of all that Carthy has done, both as a soloist and in several acoustic and electric bands, including the Albion Band, Brass Monkey and the folk family supergroup Waterson:Carthy. There's a bit of everything here, from his early work in the 1960s when - fresh from backing Bob Dylan - he worked with topical song-writer Leon Rosselson and that other guitar hero, Davy Graham (with whom he can be heard performing anything from Leadbelly songs to the South African standard, Wimoweh). He's been happy to treat traditional songs in a variety of styles, and the solo acoustic work is matched by some brave, experimental work from an early Steeleye Span line-up. The CD devoted to his treatments of contemporary songs is somewhat odd (why not include his masterful treatment of Heartbreak Hotel?) but features rousing versions of Richard Thompson and Dylan classics. (RD)

Run-DMC Grand Royal (MCA) ** £14.99

Longevity is not a concept associated with a career in hip-hop. The genre's gun obsession means there hasn't been a popular entertainment with an equivalent mortality rate since men stopped traversing Niagara Falls in barrels. Rappers who cheat death face seeing their careers extinguished by the vagaries of fashion - witness Vanilla Ice, who now presents a car restoration show on Granada Men and Motors. Such tales make Run-DMC's continued success more startling. Eighteen years after their debut, the trio's trademark sound - hectoring vocals over crunching guitars - is back in vogue thanks to rap-metal bands like Limp Bizkit. Fred Durst is among the guests on an album that finds Run-DMC unsure whether to pursue the rap-metal style or explore more straightforward hip-hop. The uneven results veer from a fearful cover of Steve Miller's Take the Money and Run to the pleasingly experimental beats of It's Over. The album doesn't live up either to the trio's reputation or their wearying braggadocio, but with most of their peers dead or forgotten, Run-DMC are probably just happy to still be here. (AP)

Clearlake Lido (Dusty Company) ** £8.99

Like a weird fusion of Nick Cave and EastEnders, Clearlake's Jason Pegg finds melodrama in mundanity. In Sunday Evening he mourns "There isn't much on except Songs of Praise" in the voice of one whose dog has just died; Something to Look Forward To complains that "Every single day is like the one before". It's tempting to say the same about Clearlake's songs. The music - silvery, jaunty guitarwork and shooting-star orchestration from Sam Hewitt on keyboards and "devices" - sometimes lacks variation, but the real problem is Pegg's voice. Even in the dinky love ditty I Hang on Every Word You Say, his voice is trapped in a whine. There are a couple of gems on Lido, the twinkly I Want to Live in a Dream and Jumble Sailing, a lovely celebration of second-hand grubbing, swirling with angelic carol-like melodies and drifting harps. They are boulders to cling to while the rest of the album has you sinking in sludge. (MC)

Stereophonics Just Enough Education to Perform (V2) *** £14.99

From thoughts of suicide to musical travelogue, Stereophonics appear consumed with the notion of getting away from it all. Descriptions of dissatisfaction and the big dreams lurking beneath the veneer of normality meet light harmonies and gentle rhythms on a diverse, suffocating album. While rumours of Kelly Jones becoming Kenny Rogers prove unfounded, there is a country flavour here, especially in the waltzing slide guitar and harmonica of Step on My Old Size Nines. Their anthemic angst isn't as overwhelming as on previous efforts, replaced by an understated combination of cynicism and sunshine. Mr Writer, with its funked-up wah-wah guitars and glistening sarcasm, is the stand-out track, Jones's sandpaper vocals and lyrics sharpened by having a focus. If the slow-building anxiety of Rooftop is anything to go by, Stereophonics could do with some time out. (BC)

Roxette Room Service (EMI) ** £14.99

If Roxette's leather trousers and footballer highlights are an incongruous spectacle in the 21st century, their sound is even more out of sync. The Swedish Eurythmics are still chipping away at the same power-pop coalface as they were in 1989, when The Look became the first of 21 fantastically unmemorable hits. As ever, singer Marie Fredriksson is the brittle focal point, compelling yet curiously unengaged as she tries to negotiate Per Gessle's lyrics. His attempt at a social conscience on Jefferson is scuppered by one of the worst first verses in history: "Jefferson was always out of luck/ I remember when we both grew up/ Jefferson got hit by a westbound truck/ I guess that didn't make him look like a million bucks." Yet a few tracks, such as the tinny Make My Head Go Pop and Real Sugar, are redeemed by choruses so insistent they quash all resistance. (CS)

Nash The Chancer (Go Beat) *** £10.99

This introduction to oddbod singer-guitarist Russell Nash is reminiscent of Merz, who had a bewitchingly woozy hit with Many Weathers Apart. Nash and programmer Steve Ellington operate in similar R&B-based, anything-goes territory. The single 100 Million Ways is a happy accident of soul, reggae and (forgive them) Jamiroquai, bookended by the ambiguous query "Will I ever see the day that paints a picture and frees me of addiction?" It contrives to be irresistible, and is a hard act to follow for the other 13 songs, which never hit the same luscious peak. But if Black Box loses its lysergic marbles and Breakaway could be a Lighthouse Family outtake, Nash's fluid voice is consistently a thing of beauty. (CS)